... Asteroid-watchers and protein researchers are showing that Microsoft... Server 2008 can support applications at scales up to 1 petabyte./p...REDMOND Wash. Nov. 6 /- Just three monthsaft...(Logo: A HREF http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO ...

Asteroid-watchers and protein researchers are showing that Microsoft SQL

Server 2008 can support applications at scales up to 1 petabyte.

REDMOND, Wash., Nov. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Just three months
after Microsoft Corp. released its data management and business
intelligence platform, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, several large customers
are using the database software to scale new heights in data warehousing
and transaction processing.

SQL Server 2008 gives companies the flexibility of "scaling up"
individual servers by adding processors or memory and "scaling out" their
databases by adding more nodes to increase performance. Microsoft is also
taking advantage of the latest hardware advancements and announced this
week at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2008 that
Windows Server 2008 R2 and the next release of SQL Server, code-named
"Kilimanjaro," will support more than 64 processor cores. This will provide
customers with the option to consolidate data sources while maintaining
similar or improved performance and scalability. Either way, SQL Server
literally grows with a business.

SQL Server 2008 offers "a robust, scalable and secure database platform
to support critical business applications. Large multiterabyte databases
with SQL Server have become common for both transactional applications and
data warehouses, as enterprises build larger and complex databases,"
according to a report from Forrester Research, "SQL Server 2008 Ups
Pressure on Competitors; Microsoft Boosts Manageability, BI, Performance,
Productivity and Security," by Noel Yuhanna, Mike Gilpin and David D'Silva;
Sept. 22, 2008.

Warehousing the Heavens

Perhaps the most impressive application of SQL Server so far -- and one
of the most dramatic -- is the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid
Response System, or Pan-STARRS for short, a wide-field celestial imaging
facility being built at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy.
Its architects plan to photograph the entire available sky several times
each month, trying to discover asteroids and comets that could pose a
danger to Earth. The huge volume of images produced by this system will no
doubt also prove valuable for many other scientific programs.

When Pan-STARRS is fully operational, it will have four telescopes,
each with a digital camera capable of 1.4-gigapixel resolution. With just
one telescope in operation so far, the facility already generates 1.4
terabytes of image data per night. For the longer term, its architects are
installing 1.1 petabytes (quadrillion bytes) of disk storage. Although
Pan-STARRS won't use up all of that storage right away, it will still rank
as one of the world's largest databases.

Compressing, storing and crunching that data is the job of SQL Server.

"There are only a handful of databases that large in the world," said
Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of the Data and Storage Platform
Division at Microsoft. "If SQL Server can handle applications this large,
imagine how well it can meet the needs of the average enterprise. SQL
Server 2008 is packed with technologies to scale up individual servers and
scale out very large databases."

From Astronomy to Biology

Valerie Daggett's world-renowned protein research lab at the University
of Washington is near the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash. Her team is
investigating one of the fundamental unsolved problems in molecular
bioengineering: the mechanism by which proteins fold themselves from
essentially two-dimensional polypeptide chains into precise,
three-dimensional structures. Experts believe that incorrectly folded
proteins may be responsible for some of the most menacing diseases of our
era, including mad cow disease, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease,
emphysema and cystic fibrosis.

Because experimental approaches provide only limited amounts of
information about the actual folding process, Daggett Research Group
employs computer simulations, which generate massive amounts of data that
must be analyzed. The lab has already produced more than 64 terabytes of
data and is generating an additional 15 terabytes a year.

By taking advantage of the relational and online analytical processing
(OLAP) capabilities of SQL Server, the team has been able to attack
problems in new ways and accelerate its rate of progress. "We've begun to
address substantial questions that move us closer to solving the
protein-folding problem and other biomedical problems," Daggett said. "With
SQL Server, we can investigate questions that were practically impossible
to answer before. We can examine 100 times more data because some tasks
that used to take hours are now reduced to fractions of a second."

"Data-warehousing techniques have been applied widely in business and
financial applications, but are much less common in scientific research,"
said Andrew Simms, a graduate student in the Daggett lab. "We think the
current model will scale beyond 100 terabytes."

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in
software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize
their full potential.

(Date:12/7/2016)... Diego (PRWEB) , ... December 07, 2016 , ... ... data from its phase I/II dose escalation and expansion clinical trial for its ... in Vienna, Austria. The purpose of the trial was to determine the safety, ...

(Date:12/7/2016)... , Dec. 7, 2016 Neogen Corporation ... named Dr. Dan Kephart as its chief ... Kephart will assume his responsibilities at Neogen effective Jan. ... development director for the agribusiness unit of Thermo Fisher ... development at Life Technologies. His extensive industry experience also ...

(Date:12/7/2016)... 2016 Nordion, a standalone business of Sterigenics ... today,s award by the United States Department of ... the Phase II cooperative agreement funding to GA ... University of Missouri Research Reactor Center (MURR ® ... establishment of a new, reliable supply of molybdenum ...

(Date:12/7/2016)... 7, 2016 Vyriad Inc. announced today the appointment ... Board of Directors. "We are delighted to ... business and develop our oncolytic viruses as the next ... Stephen Russell , MD, PhD, CEO of Vyriad. "Al ... vision and passion for making a difference for cancer ...

(Date:11/19/2016)... Securus Technologies, a leading provider of civil and criminal ... monitoring, announced today that it has offered a challenge ... technology judge determine who has the largest and best ... platform, and the best customer service. "ICSolutions ... we do – which clearly is not the case ...